Setting the scene

For many organisations working in the mental health sector funding cycles and government policy dictate how and when service offerings are expanded and developed. For many this has resulted in digital platforms and tools being built based on specific requirements often for the short term.

Working to funding cycles meant that one youth mental health organisations digital environment had been built more as a set of pieces and discrete projects rather than as a unified vision.

The Project

Using a design thinking problem solving approach I led a project to help a youth mental health organisation to develop a user journey design artefact and roadmap to help prioritise their digital initiatives based on the needs of the young people using the service and the organisation’s vision.

This work has so far created the foundations for the redesign of elements of the online experience, key website features and functionality and a more integrated approach to data capture and utilisation.

The Approach

The heart of this project was finding a way to articulate the needs of both the organisation and the young service users in a way that could guide prioritisation of future design and development efforts while working within the constrains of what was possible within the tech and organisational constraints.

The Desirability, Viability, Feasibility Venn digram became the perfect framework on which to design exploratory activities, describe the path forward and tell the stories of the needs of all the various groups.

The Activities

The Double Diamond process was used as the basis for exploring the problem space and creating the design artefacts that brought to life the user journey and prioritise the future roadmap.

The project commenced with exploration. Diverging our thinking to understand the journey and perspectives of young people using the service and the organisation and it’s goals.

Key research activities included;

• Multiple co-design workshops with key representatives from all departments within the organisation. Workshop activities included vision setting, journey mapping, empathy mapping, creation of user stories and prioritisation exercises.

• Remote co-design workshops with young people which used both quantitative and qualitative research methods to explore the current state digital and broader service experience and brainstorm ideas about what a more ideal future state would be.

Following this exploration I worked alongside a visual designer and tech lead to bring to life the story of the needs of the young people and organisation and create recommendations on how to work towards the ideal future state based on the current tech constraints.

The Opportunity

The focus of this project was to provide clarity on how digital initiatives would be prioritise and create the foundations for future planning activities based on a shared vision and understanding of the needs of young people and the organisation. Through the research we uncovered that there was an opportunity to extend the thinking to focus on improving overall mental health outcomes for young people and how the organisation could support this in all areas of the service experience, whether they be online or in-person.

By expanding the discussion about how the digital environment fits into broader mental health outcomes we were able to tell a more compelling story of the needs of young people and provide specific reasons why some of the more time consuming and technically difficult digital initiatives were integral to the future of the online experience.

The Outcome

Following this project the internal digital and service design teams within the organisation have been able to focus their attentions on key projects that are making more effective use of existing features and functionality before adding in new features. These projects are delivering a better experience for service users while creating a more integrated approach to data capture and utilisation for internal teams.